NINE

Father’s Day

June 17, 2012

7:37 am

Mathieu pushed Nadia’s bedroom door open and stood in the doorway. Her room looked the same as the day before, and the day before that. It hadn’t changed in nearly three months, frozen in time, a reminder that a life had come to an abrupt halt. He stared at a poster of Kurt Cobain. Just a few months ago it had been all about Justin Bieber. It had been Justin this and Justin that. Mathieu would cringe when she mentioned his name.

And almost overnight, Nirvana’s front man had appeared. And then her rollercoaster moods had started.

He picked up her iPod and skimmed through the play list: Nirvana, Green Day, Blink 182, Interpol, She Wants Revenge. His little girl had changed, pulling a one eighty. What had happened? Maybe Lori-Anne had been on to something when she’d mentioned that maybe Nadia had been trying drugs. Except the day of her funeral hadn’t been the day to bring that up.

Now he wondered.

It would explain the turnaround. Hadn’t he smelled smoke on Nadia and Caitlin? Yes, Nancy smoked and it could be residue on Caitlin, but on Nadia? He knew kids her age tried pot, but he’d always hoped that she’d be above that. Parents didn’t want their kids to get hurt, parents didn’t want their kids to do anything wrong, parents didn’t want their kids to grow up. But the days of being Nadia’s hero were in the rear-view mirror of his life.

Mathieu remembered how she’d kept dropping her iPod, so he’d gone out one day after New Year’s to buy one of those gel covers. It had saved the iPod on several occasions. He put it back on the night table and moved toward her bookshelf: The Harry Potter books, the Twilight series, the Hunger Games trilogy. Nadia had loved to read. That too had stopped just a few months ago.

Why?

He pulled her grade six yearbook from the shelf and leafed through it, seeing a couple of pictures of Nadia and Caitlin. They looked so much younger just two years ago. Kids. Good kids. Still innocent.

No smoking.

No attitude.

He put the yearbook back and sat at her desk. He powered up Nadia’s laptop. A birthday present, this past February. She’d begged for that more than the iPod. He and Lori-Anne figured she could use it for homework assignments. Mostly though, she used it for Facebook. All the kids used Facebook. It was the way they socialized. Strange how social media was such a big thing, yet to Mathieu, it seemed to lack the main aspect of socializing: people getting together. Sure, the kids had hundreds of friends, virtual friends, but really, who was kidding who? How many of those so-called friends actually knew you? A dozen? Half a dozen? One or two?

His fingers hovered over the keyboard, barely touching the keys. He was being critical. It wasn’t his generation. He didn’t quite understand them. It was a parent thing. Each generation never quite got the other.

Then again, he loved to use the internet for research. He’d discovered all sorts of nice woodworking projects online. He’d even joined a chat group of woodworkers and exchanged ideas regularly with people he’d never met in person.

The world was simply different.

Smaller but a little lonelier.

“What are you doing?” Lori-Anne said.

Mathieu turned and saw his wife standing in the doorway. She never entered Nadia’s room. The last time he’d pointed that out, it had turned into a vicious fight. He had accused her of not caring, of not loving their dead daughter. Lori-Anne had said nothing. She had not cried. She had iced him with her eyes, and walked away.

Nadia had been gone only a week.

He had run after her, shouting from the top of the stairs about how cold she was and what was she scared of, it was just a room. Lori-Anne paused halfway down the staircase, but held her tongue. Still, nothing had been the same since.

“I’m just sitting here, taking in who she was. It brings me closer to her. Sometimes I can even smell her, the way she smelled after her bath when she was a baby. The Ivory soap on her skin, the baby shampoo. It’s all here,” he said with a hand gesture. “If you came in, you’d feel it too.”

Lori-Anne stared him down.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said quietly. “I just meant—”

“I know what you meant,” she said. “Just let it be.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Sorry.”

They looked at each other for a second or two, and then Mathieu turned back to the laptop to get away from her gaze.

“We should talk,” Lori-Anne said, crossing her arms.

“We’re talking now.”

She pressed her lips into a thin line. “I mean about what’s going on between us.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Can you look at me?”

Mathieu did but struggled not to turn away. The way Lori-Anne pinned him with her stare, cold and angry, but also vulnerable, afraid to get hurt put him on edge. He really didn’t want to have a fight. Not this morning. He just wanted to remember his daughter and pretend that she was still with them. He wanted to be a father on Father’s Day.

Was that too much to ask?

“Look, I’ll call my parents and tell them I’m not coming over so we can work a few things out.”

“But it’s Father’s Day. Don’t you want to see your dad?”

“I’ve been a little mad at him lately.”

Mathieu didn’t say anything. He felt the same way about his father-in-law. Polite acknowledgment of one another best described their relationship. If it could be called that. The old man had never approved of Mathieu although Mathieu had never done anything to cause Samuel to have this animosity toward him. He’d stopped looking for his approval long ago.

He was simply Lori-Anne’s father.

“So, can we talk about us?” Lori-Anne said.

“We used to ride our bikes a lot back then,” he said, looking at the 8x10 picture hanging on the wall, showing the three of them on their bikes. Nadia had been three or four and sat in the bike seat behind Mathieu. He’d put the camera on the hood of the car and set the timer while Lori-Anne held his bike until he mounted it. Not the best picture but Nadia had liked it.

“We went to Rockcliffe that day.”

Lori-Anne leaned against the doorframe. The hardness in her eyes faded. “Yeah. We rode around and looked at all those expensive homes.”

“We stopped at a park because Nadia was having a bird. She had to play there. It had this thing you hang on to and it slides across a long steel beam. What do you call that?”

She shrugged.

“We had fun,” he said, still looking at the picture. “We used to have simple fun outings. Nadia fell asleep in her seat on the way back to the car. Her head kept swinging from side to side and I had a hard time balancing the bike.”

Lori-Anne smiled. “I’d forgotten about that. I was laughing so hard and you were all uptight about losing your balance.”

He looked at her, pensive. “Where did all those fun days go?”

“I don’t know,” she said, planting her right foot against the doorframe. “I really don’t know.”

A silence fell between them. Mathieu’s gaze returned to the picture on the wall. A small sensation ignited inside his chest, a flicker of happiness that burned out too quickly.

“Life was good then,” he said. “We were good.”

“It can be again,” Lori-Anne said. “We can be.”

He turned to her. “Do you really believe that?”

“Yes,” she said. “It will never be the same. We’re changed forever by what happened. But why can’t we find some sort of happiness together again?”

He rubbed the two-day growth on his chin.

“Want to give it a try?” she said. “Give us a chance?”

“I just need . . .” he said.

“What?” she said, looking at him. “What do you need? Tell me what I can do to help you. Don’t shut me out anymore. We need each other to get through this.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should see a counsellor.”

“Like a shrink?”

“Someone with experience and knowledge who can help us, yes.”

He shifted on the chair. “I’d rather not.”

“Mathieu,” she said, “We need help. I see it, why can’t you?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “I just need a bit of time.”

“It’s been three months!”

“SO!” he said, an explosion of anger darkening his eyes. “If I need a year, so be it. Just because you’ve moved on doesn’t mean that I’m ready. Damn it, I miss her so much.”

“And I miss her too,” she said. “I love Nadia as much as you do. Maybe I wasn’t with her as much, but you can’t fault me for that, and you can’t think that I loved her or miss her any less. She was my daughter too.”

“So how can you forget her so easily?”

“Who says I forgot her?” she said with a defensive hand gesture. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“It’s what I see,” he said. “You went back to work just a few days after we buried her. What am I supposed to think?”

“You know what?” she said. “I don’t give a damn what you think. I can’t believe this. It’s absolutely insane. Are you listening to yourself? Just because I drag myself to work every day and pour my energy into something else for a while doesn’t mean I’m not in pain. My work is my therapy. It’s a routine that’s helping me get on with life without my daughter in it.”

She turned her head to hide her coming tears.

“Sorry,” he said. He took a step toward her but she stepped back. “You just don’t seem to be in as much pain as me—”

“Who says I’m not?”

“I . . . I . . .”

“You know,” she said, “I was hoping we could spend the day together and figure things out and get us back on track. But I don’t think you want the same thing. I don’t know what you want. Do you? Huh? Because if you do, then I sure hope you’ll tell me someday so we can save what we have left. Just don’t wait too long or we’ll have nothing left to save.”

Before he could say anything, Lori-Anne strode down the hallway to their room and slammed the door. He took a few steps, then stopped.

He put his fist through the wall, the plasterboard crumbling to the floor.

“Fuck!” Holding his throbbing hand, Mathieu hurried down the stairs and slammed the front door on his way out, not bothering to lock it. He got in the Pathfinder, the tires squealing as he gunned the engine. He drove too fast through the neighbourhood, blaring the horn and jamming on the brakes when someone backed out of their driveway without looking. Mathieu swerved and gave the guy the finger. At the intersection, stopped by a red light, he slapped the steering wheel with his aching hand. Pain shot to his elbow. “Damnit!” Someone gave him a polite honk and Mathieu flipped him the bird. He needed to get away, get somewhere that wasn’t so bloody busy. He made a left on Jock Street and followed it to the end, by then knowing where he was headed. He hadn’t been there since the funeral, not because he hadn’t wanted to, but because he’d been unable to find his courage.

Today, he needed to go.

Mathieu parked the car at the edge of the cemetery and watched as people came and went in their cars. Groups of mourners walked the grounds, small families huddled together, an older woman stood alone in front of a tombstone. After a few minutes, he turned the radio station to the one Nadia liked, and listened to the music she’d listened to lately. He heard a lot of songs he’d once liked too, but over the years he’d pretty much listened to whatever Lori-Anne or Nadia wanted to listen to. As long as they were happy, he was fine with that. That’s really all he’d ever wanted, for the two women in his life to be happy.

His conversation with Lori-Anne played in his mind. All she wanted was for the two of them to be happy again, to make a life again, to find love again. He got all of that. It’s just that he wasn’t there yet, and didn’t know if and when he’d get there. For him, it was simply too soon.

He looked toward Nadia’s grave. It felt surreal that his daughter, that beautiful little girl who had once fit in the palm of his hand, was nothing but ashes. That reality tightened the muscles in his stomach, and his jaw clenched so hard it ached. How did someone find happiness after such a loss? Was it possible?

After an hour, he pulled away and merged with the traffic, his mind unable to convince his legs to step out of the car and make the walk to her gravesite. He’d come here tormented and consumed by rage, weighted down by feelings of worthlessness, and now he was leaving with his heart filled with shameful regrets. He saw a semi-transport coming in the opposite lane and slowly drifted toward it. To end this misery, to finally get relief, could be that simple. But then he pulled the car back and brought it to a stop on the shoulder, a shiver running up his spine even though the temperature gauge on the dashboard indicated that it was already twenty-six degrees Celsius outside.

A gorgeous early summer’s day.

Except that Mathieu couldn’t shake that shiver. He would never tell anyone, but he was certain that Nadia had just saved his life, her hands on top of his hands, steering the car away from the approaching death that he’d been so sure was the answer to the torture his life had become.